Stadtkart
Social Democratic Party (303 seats) Radical Party (112 seats) Opposition (385 seats): Conservative Party (198 seats) People's Party (104 seats) Liberal Party (65 seats) Green Party (18 seats) |Last = 1 December 2018 |Next = 1 December 2022}}The Stadtkart ("state body") is the Lungarian federal parliament. It can be compared to the lower house of parliament, while the Landerkart can be compared to the upper house of a bicameral parliament. The Stadtkart meets at the Parliament Building in Inner Munbach. Edward Lischmann is the current President of the Stadtkart. Members of the Stadtkart (Stadtkartmann) are elected on 1 December every four years by adult Lungarian citizens through list voting. Election Day may be held earlier if the Prime Minister loses a vote of no confidence and the monarch calls for a new general election. The constitutionally mandated amount of seats is 800. Tasks Together with the Landerkart, the Stadtkart is the legislative branch of the Lungarian political system. Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the Stadtkart considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the government's legislative program. The committees play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered. The Stadtkart members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the Stadtkart in turn elects the Prime Minister and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the prime minister or cabinet officials. For example, the Stadtkart can conduct a question hour, in which a government representative responds to a previously submitted written question from a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituent's problem. Understandably, the opposition parties are active in exercising the parliamentary right to scrutinize government actions. Electoral term The Stadtkart is elected every four years. Elections occur on 1 December, which is known as Election Day and is a national holiday. Snap elections are possible, but can only be called by the monarch, which only can occur on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Snap elections are not considered national holidays, and thus voter turnout is consistently much lower than it is on Election Day. Election Members serve four-year terms, with elections held every four years, or earlier in the relatively rare case that the Stadtkart is dissolved prematurely by the monarch. The Stadtkart can be dissolved by the monarch on the recommendation of the prime minister if the latter has lost a vote of confidence in the Stadtkart, if the recommendation is made and accepted before the Stadtkart acts to elect a new Prime Minister. All candidates must be at least eighteen years old; there are no term limits. The election uses the party-list proportional representation electoral system. Distribution of seats in the Stadtkart Each state is allocated a certain number of seats in the Stadtkart based on their population, and members of the Stadtkart are elected from the parties' state lists in such a way as to achieve proportional representation. The constitution mandates the Stadtkart always consist of 800 seats, but the amount of seats delegated to each state may differ. Members of the Stadtkart do not need to reside in the state in which they are representing; while this is often the case, it is not required and many representatives do not visit the states they represent outside of political campaigns. The current composition is as follows: Organization Parliamentary groups The most important organizational structures within the Stadtkart are parliamentary groups. The size of a party's parliamentary group determines the extent of its representation on legislative committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The parliamentary group, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities. The leadership of each parliamentary group consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent the parliamentary group, enforce party discipline, and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each parliamentary group are distributed among working groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The parliamentary group meets every Tuesday afternoon in the weeks in which the Stadtkart is in session to consider legislation before the Bundestag and formulate the party's position on it. Executive body The Stadtkart's executive body is the Presidium. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Stadtkart, including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chamber's president (usually elected from the largest parliamentary group) and vice presidents (one from each parliamentary group). Committees Most of the legislative work in the Stadtkart is the product of standing committees, which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). There are currently 23 standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various parliamentary groups in the chamber. In the current Stadtkart, the SDL chaired ten committees, the LL chaired eight committees, the LW chaired three committees, the People's Party chaired one committee, and the Greens chaired one committee. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees (e.g. The budget committee is always chaired by the biggest opposition party). These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all. Category:National legislatures Category:National lower houses Lungary